NORIKO OGAWA (piano), is the third prize winner of 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition. In 1999 Noriko was awarded the Japanese Ministry of Education's Art Prize.

Noriko records regularly for the BBC as recitalist and soloist, gives chamber recitals and appears with the major UK and Japanese orchestras, including The Philharmonia, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Philharmonic, Ulster Orchestra, Halle, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool, and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Amongst the leading conductors she has worked with Libor Pesek, Leonard Slatkin, Tadaaki Otaka, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Engagements abroad have included concerts with Singapore Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony, Schleswig-Holstein Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. In 2001 she saw the launch of her piano duo with Kathryn Stott. The Stott/Ogawa Piano Duo will be touring Japan in 2004

Since 1997 Noriko records exclusively for BIS. Her recordings include Takemitsu (Riverrun, Editor's Choice, Gramophone, January 03), Rachmaninov 2nd and 3rd Piano Concerto, (CD of the year, The Times 98) and Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition (the Critics' Choice, BBC Music Magazine 98). Her latest series is the solo piano works by Debussy, volumes I and II (Editor's Choice, Gramophone Magazine, March 03). Future releases include Grieg Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic, and recording with Kathryn Stott featuring music by Delius.

'Every bar of these new performances confirm Ogawa as a most elegant, scrupulously sensitive interpreter...you could hardly find a more skillful or sympathetic artist from a younger generation than Noriko Ogawa.'
Bryce Morrison EDITOR'S CHOICE, GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE, March 2003